The WHY behind Chalkboards and Chicken Coops

I never saw myself as a homeschooling, homesteading mama… none of it. I enjoyed my sugar and dyes and bread and ice cream. I was an ambitious and successful business woman. My whole life, this was my drive and my goals were huge and achieved every single season. I laughed when I got a paper in the mail that identified me as a “homemaker” … I was offended. My family and I were living our lives out loud and face paced and loving every minute of it! And THEN in comes 2022. In 2022 I was diagnosed with cancer and it brought my world to a standstill. Life immediately got slower… much much slower. I knew it was time for some changes, I just never imagined what would come of it all. May 2022 I was diagnosed with uterine cancer, underwent surgery where we found that my cancer had spread to my lymph nodes and I would battle through 6 months of chemo. It was then that I knew I needed the cleanest products ever going into and on my body. I dove deep into research. I cut out as many toxins as I could but I was still very adamant about not cooking and we were eating a lot of processed food. I made it through chemo with amazingly high spirits and was cancer free for 7 month. 7 glorious months. Then we found 2 tumors in my lung. The cancer was back. I had another surgery to remove the cancer and was put on a 2 year chemo regimen. April 2026 will be 2 years of treatment, so I still have a ways to go. I felt very strongly (for a year! It took me a year to get to this point LOL) that God was leading me to make my own food. To homestead. This is a new thing to me, but I think I’m killing it! I’m cooking from scratch and loving every minute of it. When a recipe calls for bouillon cubes, I figure out how to make my own… cream of chicken? Yeah, I’ll make that too… my own taco seasoning, chili seasoning, all of it.

Now for the chalkboards part of the story. In 2022, I was going through chemo for the first time and T was STRUGGLING with school. He cried every day and would be so upset about having to go that he would physically be sick. He missed at least one day each week. His teacher was anything but sympathetic to what was going on at home and because she’d had my other 2 kiddos in class she thought she had T pegged. She yelled a lot, she was loud, and just NOT what he needed or wanted in that season. In October, after just being fed up with the school system, I plucked him out of public school and we began the journey of homeschooling. We started with an online school that he could do independently. After chemo, we stuck with it while I was trying to figure out life again. In 2024, I found a wonderful community (PamBarnhill.com) and really learned SO much about homeschooling and different methods and a whole different world was opened up to me… which in turn has opened up to T as well. We are thriving through this season of life and I feel VERY blessed to have this time with T and the flexibility to have our school on our terms… where there is no “behind” and we are allowed to set our own goals and I get to watch him thrive.

So, if you’re a like minded soul, or just curious about my journey… nice to meet you! I can’t wait to talk to you more!